Chapter Seven
JURA LEANED AGAINST a tree, her ribs heaving from her run. It had been a week since Thal’s death and, except for the burial ceremony, she had not left the women’s field. Over Thal’s deep grave she had looked up to see the man who was her husband glaring at her, but he had quickly turned away.
Turned away, she thought with anger, that’s how everyone was reacting to her.
The guardswomen looked at her with hooded eyes and their whispering stopped when she approached.
Three days after the Honorium the trainees stopped obeying her.
Onora, a high-tempered, vain girl who dreamed of commanding the guard and who had fought very hard to win Rowan, had sneered at Jura with contempt and said that she had been discarded by the king, so why should they give her their respect?
Jura had been faced with ten young recruits, each staring at her with defiance.
Her impulse had been to pull a knife on Onora but Jura was not stupid enough to pit herself against ten strong women. With as much dignity as she could muster, she had turned and left the field.
There seemed to be no one on her side. The guardswomen believed she had lied about not wanting to win and had deliberately knocked Cilean down. As for Cilean, she lay in her chamber, her body slowly healing, and refused to see Jura.
Now, as Jura leaned against the tree, she knew she hated this Rowan who called himself king.
Her anger was so great that at first she didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. The man was almost upon her before she drew her knife. It was one of the English knights who had accompanied her enemy from England.
“Put that away,” he snapped. He was a young man, dressed in the long robes of the English, and he was scowling at her. “My lord bids you come.”
“I do not obey him,” Jura said, her knife at the ready.
The man took a step toward her. “Go ahead and threaten me. I’d love to remove a little of your hide. I don’t have much use for your people and even less for you.”
“Neile!” said a deep voice to Jura’s left.
She turned, knife ready, toward the voice. Another English knight stood there, an older man, or at least he looked older, since there was a scar across the part in his hair and the hair had grown white there.
This man turned toward Jura. “My lady—” He stopped in anger at the snort from the other knight. “King Rowan wishes you to come to him.”
“I have work to do here,” Jura said.
“You bitch!” the younger knight, Neile, said, and took a step toward her.
The older man stepped forward. “It is not a request. Please come with me.”
Jura saw the warning in his eyes, letting her know that there would be consequences if she did not go with him. She knew the time had come to pay for her crime of winning the Honorium. She sheathed her knife. “I am ready.”
She followed the older knight, the younger one behind her, to the edge of the forest. A saddled horse waited for her and a pack animal was loaded with what she recognized as her meager belongings. She did not comment on their presumption but rode with the two men toward Escalon.
She had been isolated since her marriage and had no idea how the Irial people had reacted to the separation of her and Rowan, but the people soon let her know.
They laughed as she rode by and called her the Maiden Queen.
They loved the idea of this beautiful young woman, who so many had lusted after, being rejected by the king.
Jura held her head high as they rode into the walled city then through the inner walls to Thal’s castle. Inside, the castle was much cleaner than when Jura had lived there and she snorted in contempt. Such a waste of time on frivolities.
The English knight opened a door to a room that Jura knew well. Thal had used this room for planning his war strategies. She walked inside and the door closed behind her. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness.
Rowan sat at one end of the room, the lack of light making his hair appear dark. “You may sit,” he said.
“I will stand,” she answered.
She could feel his anger, but it was no stronger than her own.
“We must talk,” he said through his teeth.
“I have nothing to say that has not been said,” she answered.
“Damn you,” he raged. “This is your fault for enticing me to believe you wanted me.”
For all the man looked nothing like Thal, he sounded like him. Thal never believed any wrong had been caused by him but was always others’ fault. “One does not confuse lust with wanting marriage,” she said calmly. “I may lust after a well-formed blacksmith but I would not wish to marry him.”
“I am your king, not a blacksmith.”
She stared at him. “You are not my king. You are an Englishman who, because of some cruel jest of the gods, has been made my husband. There are ways for our marriage to be dissolved.”
Rowan got up and walked to the narrow arrow slit that passed for a window at the far end of the room.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I have looked into that, but I’m afraid it will not be possible.
At least not yet, not when the Honorium is so fresh in people’s minds.
” He paused and Jura saw him hunch his shoulders together.
“I curse the day my father met my mother. I wish she had married a serf rather than a Lanconian. Always, being a prince has been a grief to me, but this is the worst.” He spoke so low that she barely heard him.
He turned back toward her. “I am going to unite the tribes of Lanconia, and I fear the Irials will not follow me if I set aside the half-sister of their old king’s son.”
Jura smiled at him. “Unite the tribes of Lanconia? And will you also move the Tarnovian Mountains? Perhaps you would like them a little farther south. Or maybe you’d like to move the rivers.”
His eyes shot blue fire at her. “Why did I allow my body to rule my head? Why did I not have one minute’s conversation with you before calling the Honorium?”
“You called it? I thought Thal ordered it to give all the tribes a chance at the English prince.”
“Fool that I was, I called it, as it was the only hope I had of obtaining you. I was sure you would win.”
One moment Jura was standing still and the next she was leaping at him with her hands made into fists. “You injured my friend Cilean merely for your lust?” she screamed at him. “You broke my engagement to Daire because of your japing lusts?”
He caught her as she flew at him, his back hitting the stone wall.
He was so angry at her, insanely angry, viciously angry, but the moment he touched her his anger turned to desire.
He enveloped her in his arms and his mouth crushed down on hers, and Jura responded to him, her body seeming to try to make itself dissolve into his.
Her arms went about his neck, pulling him closer as her mouth opened under his.
Her anger, her despair, her loneliness turned into desire for him. She was his to do with as he would.
Suddenly, he pushed her from him and Jura went sprawling onto the hard stone floor.
“We must talk,” he said through his teeth.
He was panting like a hard-run horse as he looked down at her. A beam of sun came through the arrow slit and lighted the back of his head. “I curse you, Jura,” he said, his jaw hard. “I made a vow before God that I’d not touch you and I will not.”
Jura was trying to recover her senses. “We are married now,” she said. Whatever problems she had with his logic, she had none with her wanting of him.
“Then you must beg me,” he said.
“I must what?” she said, rising.
“If you want me in your bed, you must beg me.”
Jura blinked at him. “Is this one of your English customs? Do you make your soft Englishwomen beg? Is that a way to further humiliate them and to make yourself feel powerful? Lanconian men need not make their women grovel. Lanconian men are men.”
His anger was back and he took a step toward her then moved away, rather like one did when one moved too close to a fire. “I made a vow to God and I will not break it. Now, we have things to discuss.”
“I have nothing to discuss with you,” Jura said, and started for the door.
He caught her arm but released it instantly. “Sit,” he ordered.
With a shrug, Jura obeyed.
Rowan turned away from her and began pacing.
“However it happened, through what mean turn of fate, you and I are married. I could dissolve the marriage if the circumstances were different, if I were not half English and therefore suspect or if you were not related to Geralt. But I cannot release us from this marriage; therefore, we will have to make concessions. Tomorrow I leave to go to the Vatell tribe to talk with their leader and you must go with me.”
Jura stood. “I most certainly will not.”
Rowan stood in front of her and leaned down until his nose was nearly touching hers. “I do not trust you to not try to gather an army to put that loud, arrogant brother of yours on the throne. I will have you near me—both of you—so that I can see what you are doing.”
“Or is it that you do not want the people to think you cannot take your wife’s virginity,” she said softly. She could feel his breath on her lips.
His eyelids lowered. “I can take it all right, make no mistake of that.” He glanced down at her lips and back to her eyes. “But I will not.”
She moved away from him. Whatever his stupid English reasons were for rejecting her, he was doing just that, rejecting her. It was another reason in her long list for hating him. “I will remain here and—”
“No!” he said loudly. “Whether you want it or not, you are my wife and you will act as such. If you do not share my bed, you will share my room, or tent, as it may be. I will let nothing stand in my way of uniting the tribes. If the people want to see me with my virginal wife, then they will see me—and I will be able to see that you do nothing evil behind my back.”
“If I put a sword through you, it will be in your heart not in your back.”
“I assume that is meant to ease my mind,” he said dryly.